During my first attempt to pass the PMP exam, I was not doing well and I started to get nervous. if you have not gone through the test yet, you do not know what I am talking about, but if you have, then you know how nervous and overwhelmed you can be during the test. PMP Exam time has no cushion and it is measured so you only have 4 hours to answer 200 questions, that means each question should be answered within 1.2 minutes. When it comes to Earned value management problems, decision tree problems, critical path and float problems, I can assure you that you will need way more time than 1.2 minutes to get the correct answer.

for me, I was not serious about the math part of the PMP Exam prep materials that I was studying and unfortunately it came back and bite me at the exam. I spent more time and efforts trying to solve the math problems so it caused me to waste time that I could have used solving others non-mathematical problems and wasted valuable points. The result is fail attempt, no promotion for that year, and another three months of studying and practicing to pass the exam. All of that could have been avoided if I was more serious about the mathproblems of the PMP Exam. Honestly, I blame Rita’s book for not emphasizing the importance of the mathematical part of the PMP Exam, other than that, her book was great.

I decided to write this post just to bring awareness about the importance of practicing math problems for the PMP exam so you get the correct answer and not to waste valuable time trying to remember how to solve them. Please focusd more on the topics that more frequently included in the Exam such as Earned Value management, Risk problems, critical path and float problems, and procurement problems. Those are the problems that have always been on the exam.

In my opinion, you do not need to really focus on other math topics since those topics have always been 10%-15% of all math problems that included at the PMP Exam. Just focus on these four topics of math problems and you will be ready to solve any math problem that the exam may throw at you.